Stunted pepper plants
 

My sweet banana pepper plants are only about 14" tall and they have a
distinctly yellowish cast the their leaves (always have).

They haven't put on any kind of growth spurt, yet they have started to
set flowers and one has already started to produce a fruit -- it's
only about 1/2" long now.

Should I pinch off the present set of flowers and try to make the
plants grow larger? Would that have any effect?

Mark

Stunted pepper plants
 

Mark wrote:

My sweet banana pepper plants are only about 14" tall and they have a
distinctly yellowish cast the their leaves (always have).

They haven't put on any kind of growth spurt, yet they have started to
set flowers and one has already started to produce a fruit -- it's
only about 1/2" long now.

Should I pinch off the present set of flowers and try to make the
plants grow larger? Would that have any effect?

Yes. Pinching the early flowers (and early fruits, if any) encourages
leaf and body and root growth. Peppers dote on nitrogen. Give them
slow-release nitrogen regularly, and they'll grow vigorously, set lots
of fruit, and ripen their fruit quickly. Yellow veins or yellow leaves
are a pepper's way of saying Feed Me Now. Most (maybe all, for all I
know) peppers will stop fruiting midseason if they get too hungry, but
will resume once you start feeding them again.

Fwiw, if you can over-winter your chiles, they get big and fruit
sooner than they do the first year. Damp and above freezing does the
trick, then a drastic pruning job in early spring.

--

programmer, author http://www.midnightbeach.com
and father http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs